SCENARIO-BASED SEARCH

• US 20080005079A1
• Filed: 06/29/2006
• Published: 01/03/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/29/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Dumais, Susan T., Naam, Ramez, Flake, Gary W., Huang, Xuedong D., Goodman, Joshua T., Brill, Eric D., Hurst-Hiller, Oliver, Griffin, Trenholme J., Horvitz, Eric J., Gounares, Alexander G., Brunell, Bradly A., Gates, William H.
• Application Number:
  US11/427,727
• Publication Number:
  US 20080005079A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation

Abstract

The innovation provides for a computer search to become an action that has direct nexus to an inferred (or determined) goal of an individual. The goal can be inferred or determined from any number of context/state factors. The innovation can query a user to determine user context and state factors by which a goal, objective or intent can be automatically established. The innovation can also utilize machine learning/reasoning to establish the goal of a user based upon historical, statistical and/or other probabilistic analysis. Still further, the innovation can monitor a user'"'"'s context and state thereafter dynamically journaling and logging the criterion by which the user'"'"'s objective(s) can be established. Once a goal is established, a goal-based search can be automatically conducted thereafter prompting for an action based upon a subset of the search results.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates goal-based search, comprising:

a monitoring component that dynamically establishes a context related to a user;

a user objective analyzer component that evaluates the context and determines a goal of the user; and

a search component that dynamically generates a search query as a function of the goal and establishes a plurality of search results based at least in part upon the search query.

2. The system of claim 1, the search component renders a subset of the plurality of search results based upon a physical location of the user.

3. The system of claim 2, the search component prompts an action based upon the physical location as a function of the context.

4. The system of claim 2, the search component automatically maintains a subset of the plurality of search results in a cache.

5. The system of claim 4, a subset of the plurality of search results in the cache is automatically aged-out as a function of the context.

6. The system of claim 2, the search component pre-fetches a subset of the plurality of search results as a function of an inferred future context.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising a user interface component that employs a challenge/response mechanism to elicit the goal from the user.

8. The system of claim 1, further comprising a configuration component that ranks a subset of the plurality of results based upon a physical location of the user.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising a configuration component that employs a challenge/response mechanism to traverse through the plurality of search results.

10. The system of claim 1, the search query is generated in real-time.

11. The system of claim 1, the monitoring component establishes the context from a plurality of scenario-related data sources that include at least one of user-defined intent information, personal information management (PIM) data, customer relations management (CRM) data, radio frequency identification (RFID) data, 3^rd-party metadata and system queried information.

12. A computer-implemented method of establishing a goal-related computer search, comprising:

gathering context information related to a user;

inferring an intended goal of the user as a function of the context information;

automatically establishing a search query based on the inferred user goal;

executing the search query; and

obtaining a plurality of search results based upon a physical location of the user.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

dynamically modifying the search query based upon a change in the context; and

obtaining an updated set of search results based upon the change in the context.

14. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

pre-fetching the plurality of search results based upon an inferred context; and

automatically rendering a subset of the search results based upon a physical location of the user.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising at least one of filtering, sorting and ranking the subset of the search results based upon the physical location of the user.

16. The method of claim 14, further comprising dynamically displaying a subset of the pre-fetched search results to the user based upon a utility-based analysis in connection with content inferred to be desired for current viewing by the user.

17. The method of claim 12, the act of gathering context information includes eliciting the context information from the user.

18. A computer-executable system that facilitates a computer search, comprising:

means for monitoring a user to determine context information;

means for inferring an objective of the user from a subset of the context information;

means for generating a search query based upon the objective;

means for dynamically modifying the search query based upon a physical location of the user;

means for obtaining a plurality of search results as a function of the modified search query.

19. The computer-executable system of claim 18, further comprising means for prompting the user to establish a subset of the context information.

20. The computer-executable system of claim 18, further comprising:

means for pre-fetching a subset of the plurality of search results; and

means for caching the pre-fetched subset of the plurality of search results.